MLB playoffs are a 'different monster' but aces still reign in October

BALTIMORE – Increasingly, the starting pitcher finds fewer safe spaces as the species withers amid baseball’s modern demands.

Yet October might be its most optimal season for survival.

As Major League Baseball’s playoffs commence, the art of getting 27 outs – already hyper-specialized in an era of big velocity and matchup-obsessed strategists – only gets finer. Clubs will assemble 13-man staffs to attack their specific opponent. Managers will script the out-getting like an offensive coordinator plotting an opening drive.

And hooks will be even quicker at the first sign of trouble.

Yet as this postseason kicks off with the wild-card round, a handful of aces will have the runway to prove that they, not alone but with little help, will prove to be the most efficient battering rams to get through three to four excruciating playoff rounds.

Follow every MLB game: Latest MLB scores, stats, schedules and standings.

In Houston, Detroit Tigers ace Tarik Skubal – the presumed American League Cy Young Award winner – will try to flip the balance of power against the eternally daunting Houston Astros. In Baltimore, the Orioles imported former Cy Young Award winner Corbin Burnes for this very purpose – to set a tone, to give the club an advantage.

He will be opposed in Game 1 by young Kansas City Royals left-hander Cole Ragans, who need not look over his shoulder until his fuel gauge is redlining.

“If our starting pitchers pitch the way they have all year, I’ll be fine letting them continue to pitch,” says Royals manager Matt Quatraro. “That’s a huge part of why we’re here, where we are.

“Now I will say our bullpen, especially in the last month, has been remarkable. They’ve built a lot of confidence. As they’ve gotten those reps, we’ve seen them respond.

“But by no means are we going into this with a ‘only two times through the order’ or any of that kind of stuff. We know what the strengths of our team are. And we’re going to try to ride that.”

Sure, they are few in number, but the horse may yet again prove a decisive difference this October.

'A different monster'

One year ago, Brandon Hyde’s Orioles ran into a buzzsaw. Sure, the Texas Rangers’ bats got hot at the right time, and they breezed through a wild-card sweep of the Tampa Bay Rays before winning all three games to eliminate the Orioles in the AL Division Series.

Yet looking back on the 2023 World Series champions, it’s clear one guy had an October for the ages.

Veteran right-hander Nathan Eovaldi started six postseason games for Texas – and the Rangers won them all. He was the winning pitcher in five of them, posting a 2.95 ERA and just three homers given up in 36 2/3 innings.

Eovaldi won four games on the road, including two at Minute Maid Park in the ALCS to end the Astros’ reign.

So what did the Orioles, who won 101 games in 2023 yet couldn’t buy a playoff victory, do last winter?

Trade for Burnes, a pending free agent who was so obviously going to be a rental. And while his 194 innings pitched, his 15 wins and his 2.92 ERA were oxygen for these Orioles, he was really brought here for one reason.

And that day has arrived.

“We feel great about Corbin going Game 1,” says Hyde. “He’s had a heck of a year, he’s a guy that can beat anybody on any night. And to have a guy like that with that kind of stuff, that kind of confidence – when Corbin Burnes is pitching, you expect to win that night.

“And that’s how our guys feel.”

Burnes, who turns 30 Oct. 22, is no playoff newbie, working out of the bullpen for the 2018 Milwaukee Brewers and throwing six shutout innings at the eventual champ Atlanta Braves in the 2021 NL Division Series.

Last year, he got jumped, giving up five runs in four runs to the Arizona Diamondbacks, themselves launching a surprise run to the World Series. The Brewers went home before the postseason paint had time to dry on the infield grass.

“Postseason baseball is a different monster,” Burnes said Monday. “Knowing this wild card set is a best-of-three, it’s important to win Game 1 tomorrow, and set thing up into the DS.

“You can’t look into the long haul. You say that in the season – one day at a time – but in the back of your mind you’re always looking at, ‘Hey, it’s May. We gotta make sure we’re ready for August, September, October.’

“We’re here. We’re in October. It’s time to go.”

Burnes called it “an honor” that the Orioles did not hesitate to name him the Opening Day starter, the Game 1 playoff starter, and lauded the lads in the clubhouse for bringing him into “their family” so soon.

He hopes to return the favor by imparting his playoff wisdom to the young Orioles who might have never seen a postseason game, or who got their heads spun around in the three-game Rangers sweep a year ago.

“Momentum is huge,” says Burnes. “You can feel that whether it’s the first inning, the sixth inning the ninth inning. It’s more about controlling momentum. You can feel it as a player.

“Being in that atmosphere before going through it a bunch of times, you learn ways to slow the game down a little bit.”

And the true – and few – October aces learn to revel in it.

Stone Cole killers

Ragans, 26, chose a good role model when he scrolled YouTube videos as a young lefty on the come-up in Florida.

“I probably watched every YouTube video on Cole Hamels in high school,” says Ragans of the 2008 World Series MVP for the Philadelphia Phillies. “I started taking my hands over my head in my windup and was looking for another lefty that did it. It was Cole Hamels

“He had a changeup; once I got into pro ball that became one of my better pitches. He had a lot of success. He had an unbelievable career.

“And in ’08, he had an unbelievable postseason.”

You might say.

Though there was one less round of the playoffs to navigate, Hamels had an almost identical playoff run for the champion Phillies as Eovaldi enjoyed last year. Philadelphia was 5-0 in his starts and Hamels was 4-0 with a 1.80 ERA and gave up just two homers in 35 innings.

Hamels won NLDS Game 1, NLCS Game 1 and World Series Game 1, and started the Game 5 in which the Phillies closed out the Tampa Bay Rays.

These wild-card aces won’t be able to pull off that feat; the quick turnaround to the Division Series means they’d start a Game 3 at the earliest in the next round.

But the runway to craft their own October legend is there. Veteran Royals catcher Salvador Perez is bullish on Ragans, who told him the other day, “It’s just another game, Salvy.”

Well, maybe he was fudging a bit. Quatraro is confident in his starters and Ragans can feel that. Come Tuesday afternoon at Camden Yards, perhaps the Orioles will feel that, too.

“It means a lot - that Q and everyone has that trust in me to get it started,” says Ragans. “I’m excited for it and looking forward to it.”

The USA TODAY app gets you to the heart of the news — fast. Download for award-winning coverage, crosswords, audio storytelling, the eNewspaper and more.